INLOGOV Bloghttp://inlogov.com
Official Blog of the Institute of Local Government Studies, University of BirminghamMon, 02 Mar 2015 14:25:19 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngINLOGOV Bloghttp://inlogov.com
The expansion of arms-length government is not necessarily at odds with democratic accountabilityhttp://inlogov.com/2015/03/02/the-expansion-of-arms-length-government-is-not-necessarily-at-odds-with-democratic-accountability/
http://inlogov.com/2015/03/02/the-expansion-of-arms-length-government-is-not-necessarily-at-odds-with-democratic-accountability/#commentsMon, 02 Mar 2015 14:24:22 +0000http://inlogov.com/?p=1228Continue reading →]]>How democratic is arms-length government?Catherine Durose,Jonathan B. Justice andChris Skelcherargue that those who consider it to be an undemocratic phenomenon over-simplify, and make the case for assessing the question in a more citizen and community focussed manner.

It is relatively uncontroversial to assert that modern democracies should aspire not only to democracy but also to efficiency and reliance when and as appropriate on expert, evidence-based judgments in designing and implementing governing arrangements and public policies. It is also frequently accepted that these values are often at odds with one another. Can we have both democracy and efficiency in governance? The still-expanding practice of decentralization and delegation of a variety of activities from national and subnational governments to a variety of non-state organizations has been portrayed as evidence supporting both negative and affirmative answers to that question.

Is this practice of “arms-length government” – the use of organisations other than government departments or ministries to undertake public functions such as developing policies, allocating resources, delivering services, and performing a variety of regulatory and adjudicatory functions – counter-democratic? Our research suggests that the answer is something like “not necessarily,” and “it depends.” Close centralized state control is not in every case necessarily democracy-enhancing, but neither can it be dispensed with thoughtlessly.

The challenge for institutional designers and operators is to distinguish the specific combinations of objectives, contexts, and governing designs that can achieve a favourable balance of democracy, expertise, and efficiency. More controversially, we suggest that many well intentioned advocates who share those three broad goals may need to abandon their familiar state-centric perspectives on the problem if they hope to solve it.

One dominant, state-centric perspective on arms-length government sees it as delegated governance, and suggests that agency problems and conflicts of interest will tend to lead to a democratic deficit when governing tasks are delegated (by the elected representatives who lead the state, which is the seat of legitimate collective authority) to independent agencies or quasi- or non-governmental organizations.

From this perspective the use of “arms-length” or “third-party” entities may be portrayed as a way to ensure market efficiency, reliance on technical expertise, and consistent decision-making and implementation, albeit at the expense of diminishing democracy by reducing the directness of elected representatives’ control over decisions and operations. Or, in some variants of the argument, this delegation trades “democracy” in the form of maximizing individuals’ welfare against “democracy” in the form of engaging individuals actively and expanding their capacity for collective self-determination.

An alternative, “polycentric” perspective articulated in the work of scholars including Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, Bruno Frey, and Archon Fung, views the state not as the sole seat of legitimate governing authority but rather as one locus of democratically legitimate decision making and authority: often necessary, but not always an optimal or sufficient instrument of self-governance and collective action.

This perspective views individuals and communities rather than the state as the basic locus of legitimacy, and suggests that questions about the normative desirability of governing and service-provision arrangements should be approached empirically and on a case-specific basis. This approach complicates the task of design and evaluation by offering only “it depends” as the generic answer to the arms-length question, but compensates for the additional effort by offering a way for us to see and realise possibilities that might be missed by dismissing non-state institutions of collective action out of hand.

We recently completed a multi-year project, funded by the ESRC, that brought together scholars, practitioners and activists from several countries, sectors, and types of organisation to explore the question of “arms-length government” or “governing beyond the state” in research seminars we organised at the University of Birmingham and De Montfort University. We took away from those discussions an appreciation of the manifold ways in which the polycentric perspective offers not just a valuable theoretical framework for designing and evaluating governing arrangements but also a way to make sense of the astonishing variation in the types and quality of arrangements in use today.

One set of lessons drawn from the seminars is compiled in the pamphlet Beyond the State: Mobilizing and Co-Producing with Communities. In the first part of the pamphlet, organizers Alejandra Ibañez and Lina Jamoul and researcher Liz Richardson demonstrate how community organizing and self-organization can potentially mobilize local resources for the co-design and co-production of services and empower diverse communities through constructive advocacy and negotiation. They trace the progression from oppositional mobilization to the negotiation of arrangements that generated shared power to and within case studies from Chicago and London. In the second part, Catherine Needham, Janet Newman, Chris Sherwood, and Jess Steele note that the language of co-production encompasses both the liberation and empowerment of power to and power with, and a darker side of more coercive personalization of centrally designed and dispensed services.

In a subsequent review of academic literature on arms-length government, we built on a key insight we gained from the contributors to the pamphlet. A shift in perspective from the state-centric model of legitimate and accountable governance to a polycentric perspective facilitates the analysis of approaches to collective choice and public policies in ways that engage with the potential for undemocratic or inequitable results as one relevant design consideration, rather than as an inevitable product of “delegation” by elected officials. (The article, published in Policy & Politics, is available here.)

In short, blanket generalisations about the negative implications of arm’s-length government for the quality of democracy, based on narrowly state-centric models of democratic legitimacy and accountability, are often factually incorrect and unnecessarily limit the scope of analysis in ways that may foreclose opportunities to increase both democracy and efficiency. At the same time, in the world of political practice, the increasing frequency and diversity of applications in a variety of contexts provides an abundance of material for thoughtful empirical assessment, particularly if we approach it in a way that views strong state institutions as one part of a larger configuration of institutions, rather than as the only legitimate seat of democracy.

And in fact, it is clear that citizens, practitioners, and scholars around the world are taking up the challenges of designing, implementing, evaluating, and then redesigning configurations of institutions and practices that sometimes manage to increase community power (to and with) and democracy.

Dr Catherine Durose is Senior Lecturer and Director of Research in the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham and works with the Public Services Academy.

Jonathan B. Justice is Associate Professor, School of Public Policy & Administration, University of Delaware

Chris Skelcher is Professor of Public Governance, Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham

Of all the reactions to Northamptonshire County Council’s controversial ‘Next Generation Model’ – abandoning service provision in favour of outsourcing everything to ‘specialist social enterprises’ – few can have been as measured and dispassionate as my colleague Ian Briggs’ reflections on the merits or otherwise of Public Interest Companies (PICs).

Personally, it came as a bit of a blast from the past. Typing that opening paragraph, I really couldn’t recall when I last consciously thought about that particular three-letter initialism that once seemed to feature in a good proportion of my lectures. Especially following the 2004 Companies Act, PICs were ubiquitous, and taxonomising them – and/or CICs (Community Interest Companies) – quite a fad: national and local, companies limited by guarantee, industrial and provident societies, limited companies owned by service users, unincorporated associations, social firms, share trusts, mutuals, co-operatives.

So, rusty as I am, I admit to being curious about how Northamptonshire’s down-sizing vision works out once it leaves the drawing board. This blog’s concern, though, is not Northamptonshire’s or any other single council’s future, but that of English local government as a whole – which, in a neat triad of happenstances, was also addressed last week, in the final report of the Independent Commission on Local Government Finance (ICLGF), Financing English Devolution.

The third part of the triad, unfortunately, is directly relevant only to those of us residing within reach of Birmingham’s fine Repertory Theatre, which also last week staged a highly successful production of Tyrone Huggins’ play, The Honey Man. So, three disparate events from which, if you’ll bear with me, I’ll attempt to draw a coherent theme.

The ICLGF was established by the LGA and CIPFA, and is chaired by Darra Singh. The former chief executive of Ealing and Luton Councils bears little physical resemblance to the St Kitts-born author/actor Huggins, but, if his report has the transformative impact he obviously hopes, he could reasonably claim in, say, a decade’s time, to have been English local government’s Honey Man.

Digitals see the world in terms of ones and zeros, black and white, right and wrong answers, clearly defined systems. Analogues understand and deal in approximations, probabilities and muddle, 50-plus shades of grey.

Successive governments – ministers and civil servants both – have tried for years to run local government as a single, centrally controlled, one-size-fits-all digital system. ‘Honey Man’ Darra Singh’s message is that, while local services will be delivered increasingly digitally, the delivering ‘system’, insofar as there is one, will be increasingly analogue.

Huggins’ Digital Projects have not been that extensively performed. Even so, it would be hard for their collective impact to have been any less than that of the first three efforts in the Local Finance Reform Quartet: the Layfield Committee (1976), the Balance of Funding Review (2004), and the Lyons Review (2007). All three started from the premiss that the status quo is unsatisfactory – lacking transparency, fairness, balance, and accountability – and major reform vital. Yet all were either ignored or, in Lyons’ case, attacked and effectively rejected by ministers within hours of publication.

No change there, then – and clearly there won’t be from the present Conservative-led coalition. The question is whether the new lot after May accept that this time the Commission really isn’t crying wolf: that the future now facing many, if not most, councils – severely less money, increasing and more complex service demands, and cripplingly limited scope to raise additional revenue – really has regressed from unsatisfactory to unsustainable. And recognise too that, following core grant cuts of 40%, radical reform is no longer urgent but imperative – if, that is, anything resembling a viable, democratically accountable, service-providing local government sector is to have a future.

There is of course, and always has been, an alternative: the wholly Contracting Council, famously envisioned in the 1980s by Conservative Environment Secretary Nicholas Ridley as meeting once a year to award all the council service contracts to private firms. A number of councils in recent years have gone some way down that road – most notably perhaps Suffolk and Barnet – and now Northamptonshire is preparing to go a good deal further.

Northamptonshire County Council, employer ten years ago of nearly 20,000 full- and part-time staff, plans in future a workforce of 150 max, with services formerly provided by the council or by council-run companies and partnerships being commissioned from external organisations: a Children’s Services Mutual, an Accountable Care Organisation for vulnerable adults, a Wellbeing Community Organisation, and a Place Shaping Company “to deliver services to improve Northamptonshire as a place”.

It’s analogue service provision alright, and pioneering, but not in the quite the form the Commission’s final report sets out. Nor last October’s interim report, although, reflecting the quite startling speed with which events have moved since the Scottish independence referendum, the two documents do have differing emphases.

There was an interim vagueness about how these equalisations would be managed, and a somewhat cavalier assertion (p.18) that “there is less disparity in wealth between the different parts of the country than in often assumed.” The brief equalisation discussion, though, like the report generally, focused on individual local authorities, even down to numbers of toppers and toppees: “On 2018-19 projections, self-sufficiency would require 247 councils to ‘top up’ 106 councils. Most of this could be managed through transfers between councils in the same area.”

There was a passing reference to Combined Authorities perhaps playing a part in this redistributive process, but otherwise no mention of these institutions that since then have so dominated local government discourse – while the Pioneer Authorities that take centre-stage in last week’s final report weren’t even embryonic.

The Commission’s blueprint isn’t as immediately arresting as Northamptonshire’s and its timescale is inevitably longer. But, if even substantially implemented, the shift of the central-local balance from Whitehall and Westminster to English cities and regions would be profound. Following a 10-year devolution programme, more than £200 billion of annual public spending would be controlled at ‘sub-national’ level – or twice the current total of English local authorities’ net revenue service expenditure.

The key analogue feature of the Commission’s programme is what tekkies would call its two- or variable-speed gearbox. All councils would have multi-year funding settlements, freedom to set council tax and tax discounts, and would retain 100% of business rates and business rate growth.

But there would also be ‘Pioneer’ authorities: combined authorities wishing and judged able to reform at a faster pace. These could vary council tax bands and undertake their own revaluations, have access to new or devolved taxes like stamp duty, tourism and airport taxes, and, most significantly, would control single place-based budgets covering a full range of public services, including transport, community safety, and – starting already with Greater Manchester – health.

As the Honey Man’s Commission notes, the analogue principle of variability has already been established, with city deals and devolution packages to Combined Authorities. These latter are clearly the key – which is why the honey coming the way of Birmingham and the West Midlands so far has been mostly the unblended stuff, while Greater Manchester is already onto the organic.

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

If you live in Birmingham, like I do, you could be forgiven for feeling slightly green-eyed at what is going on in Manchester at the moment. After the unprecedented devolution package that the city secured at the end of 2014, it has today been announced that Greater Manchester will be given complete control of its £6 billion NHS budget.

This means that Greater Manchester, led by a directly elected mayor, will have control of the budgets for social care; GP services; mental health; and acute and community care, as well as public health. There is clearly enormous potential here for the Manchester region to make integrated health and social care a reality. Whilst the dust settles on the details of the new arrangements, there are a few issues to consider:

There are increasing calls for integration to be at the level of the individual rather than the system, to avoid some of the problems of previous attempts at structural integration such as Care Trusts. Further structural reorganisation will also be resisted by local NHS bodies, still recovering from the Lansley reforms. Can the region be imaginative in its approach to integration, and learn lessons from what has worked and not worked in the past?

A new Greater Manchester Health and Wellbeing Board is being created to oversee the budget. Health and Wellbeing Boards are increasingly seen as the host for tackling all sorts of complex health and social care issues, and researchers at the University of Manchester have warned of placing ‘unrealistic expectations’ on the ability of boards to deliver on these agendas.

Will the notoriously centralised Department of Health really be willing to let go control on such a grand scale? Who will bear the reputational risk when problems occur?

The success of directly elected mayors has been distinctly mixed where they have been tried elsewhere in the UK. In the Greater Manchester context, where a mayor has been forced on the region by Whitehall, how likely it is that there will be sufficient public interest and support for the role to make the holder of the office a dynamic political force?

Does the announcement signal the end of the National Health Service, and if so should we mourn its passing? Local political control is very attractive in what has previously been such a centralised state, and is clearly in line with what is happening in Scotland and Wales already. However fragmentation brings the inevitability of postcode lotteries and the need for a robust political response to such differences, but it may also create new entry points for other political agendas, such as an increase in privatisation.

It must be a very exciting time to live in Manchester, although the role of pioneer can also be a rather exposed and risky place. Let’s hope that Birmingham and the other core cities can watch, learn from what’s worked and what hasn’t, and be ready soon to work with their own near neighbours to secure more local control.

Catherine Needham is Reader in Public Policy and Public Management at the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham, and is developing research around public service reform and policy innovation. Her recent work has focused on co-production and personalization, examining how those approaches are interpreted and applied in frontline practice. Follow Catherine on Twitter: @DrCNeedham.

This blog can also be found here on the Health Services Management Centre’s website

The recent announcement by Northamptonshire County Council heralding a move towards a ‘next generation model’ where four public interest companies are to be established to deliver front line services and leaving a core client organisation of around 150 employees adds to the growing number of councils (and other parts of the public sector) who are seeking to adopt this model. What is interesting here is that is goes far beyond the tired rhetoric of what is best, direct public provision or privatisation? The establishment of what are increasingly referred to as ‘public interest companies’ (PIC’s) has been slowing gathering pace in recent years, often quietly and tentatively by local authorities who may seek cost and value advantages in working with arm’s length bodies but wish to retain certain controls whilst at the same time offering freedoms to compete in open markets.

There may be a longer history to this model of provision than many may believe; however this approach does beg some interesting questions and exposes the relative lack of research and meaningful data as to the overall efficacy of the approach. Near the top of the list has to be what might this do to the market for services? Putting a potentially highly efficient, skilled and savvy organisation into the market place might be seen as a threat to any commercial provider who currently occupies part of this market space. The example of an East Anglian council who established a comparatively small arm’s length company to manage property services some years ago has grown into a successful organisation that operates in many parts of the UK, trading services within a growing number of public and commercial clients. The efficiency returns for the growing number of public sector clients will be welcomed but it can potentially have the effect of diminishing the returns of existing commercial organisations – there may be no inference at all that the trading position is in any way illegal but where staff are transferred to public interest companies they do so with a great deal of knowledge and intelligence as to what both the client and community requirements are that can be both difficult and expensive for a commercial provider to obtain.

The second interesting question is one that can be summed as ‘mind-set’. The strategic leadership of public interest companies face unusual challenges; given that the shareholding is exclusively within the public sector that shareholder will have more than just an economic interest in success, it can and does demand more than economic viability. It must ensure that the needs of the public are met and that the social value of delivery matches the economic value, something that it can be argued is not always present in wholly commercial shareholdings. Reconciling this is a new challenge for those within PIC’s. In most recently established PIC’s most of not all staff are being transferred over from the public sector and work has to be undertaken to develop a mind-set that meets the challenge of delivering to a commercial agenda as well as a public one. Failing to do this successfully can be handicap hard to overcome and may be ultimately a cause of commercial failure. This leads to the third and crucial question. Even with a small and proficient client organisation are there the right skills there to create the conditions to enable the next generation model to prosper and provide successfully for the communities served? If the right depth of commercial analysis has been undertaken and the politicians driving the new model are confident that the model and market is correct are they able to act as an intelligent shareholder on behalf of the community? It may be no good having a fresh, hybrid mind set within the PIC if it is not matched with understanding and the correct support from the client organisation. Getting beyond a vanity decision and having a realistic expectation that anything as new as a next generation model provider will need a bedding in period to operate within the tensions between a commercial market and public expectation requires tolerance and understanding of councillors and senior managers.

With a growing number of councils actively exploring this approach there may be a lesson for those who are dithering – being late to the game could leave no space to enable PIC’s to be established as your neighbour has done it for you! Whatever direction this takes it is perhaps one of the most fundamental shifts we have seen since the days of CCT, no longer public bad – private good but a half-way house creating demands for new skills both within PIC’s and in slimmed down intelligent clients. Get in wrong on either side of this equation and retrieval could be more problematic than getting off the ground in the first place. That a growing number of PIC’s are already out there quietly getting on with it may suggest that the decision Northamptonshire has taken is not merely brave but one that is based upon sound good sense.

Ian Briggs is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Local Government Studies. He has research interests in the development and assessment of leadership, performance coaching, organisational development and change, and the establishment of shared service provision.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles is famed for his sensitive news antennae. I wonder therefore just what – in a week dominated by revelations of his party’s and government’s moral flakiness on the whole tax collection business – persuaded those antennae that it would be a good time to attack local authorities’ tax collecting record.

Actually, I don’t wonder. I assume that, as with the many other Pickles’ Passions – from council newspapers and biscuits at meetings (bad) to street parties and weekly bin collections (good) – he just can’t stop himself.

Councils’ uncollected taxes and hoarded revenue reserves have become Pickles’ winter perennials – a reassuring sign of approaching spring – and three league tables of the supposedly guiltiest councils were duly posted by the DCLG last Tuesday.

As a Birmingham City Council taxpayer, I was naturally interested to note that Birmingham featured prominently on two of these naughty lists – first of the 10 councils with highest council tax arrears, and fourth of those with highest non-ringfenced reserves – and, to be honest, slightly surprised that it didn’t register at all on the third. Doubtless to the minister’s disappointment, DCLG hadn’t found a single “surplus fixed asset, not directly occupied, used or consumed in the delivery of services”.

There’s no attempt to percentagise these lists, or acknowledge that there might just possibly be some relationship with, say, the size or relative deprivation of councils’ populations. So Pickles’ shock-horror story amounts to large councils having bigger tax arrears, reserves, etc. than small councils.

It’s hardly headline stuff, but Local Government minister, Kris Hopkins, was determined we should share his boss’s outrage. During that same day’s Commons debate on the recent local government finance settlement, my and the University’s Birmingham, Edgbaston MP, Gisela Stuart, had questioned the fairness and sustainability of Birmingham’s share of that settlement. In customary Commons style, the minister, rather than answer that tricky question, preferred to tell the House about the council’s tax arrears:

“I am afraid that poor leadership in Birmingham and the fact it has not collected some £100 million in council tax arrears may explain some of the issues it is facing. Stronger leadership and the ability to carry out the simple function of placing a charge on an individual and collecting it will assist it” (col.671).

In the heat of the moment, Hopkins omitted to explain that this arrears figure was a cumulative one covering the whole 21-year life of the council tax, or that it includes costs incurred in collecting unpaid taxes. Nor, even more unfortunately, was there time for Gisela Stuart or anyone else to observe that the biggest councils have not only the largest cumulative tax arrears, but also, equally unsurprisingly, the largest tax receipts.

For, by Hopkins’ reasoning, Birmingham’s having collected £63 million more last year in council tax and non-domestic rates than any other English authority outside London presumably reflects rather positively on the quality of its political leadership (Table 5).

Returning from Planet Hopkins to the real world, the key statistics – and they are key – are those for tax collection rates: not pounds collected but percentages collected of the total sum due.

The 2013-14 council tax collection rate for all English authorities was 97%, ranging from shire districts’ 97.9% to 95.4% for Inner London boroughs and Birmingham’s most obvious comparators, the 36 metropolitan districts. Birmingham’s 95.3%, therefore, was fractionally below the met district average, but, as it happens, second highest among the 10 large authorities in the DCLG’s naughty list – behind only Croydon (96.2%) and way ahead of the coalition’s current favourite Labour council, Manchester (91.7%).

Certainly not the disgrace, then, that its heading of the naughty list suggested, but yes: both improvable and costly. If ever decimal places matter, it’s here. Though respectable nationally, Birmingham’s 95.4% collection rate was lowest of the seven West Midlands metropolitan districts – behind Solihull (98.6%) and, in a perhaps less expected second place, Sandwell (98%), ranked 9th most multiply deprived of England’s 326 local authorities against Birmingham’s 13th. With each percentage point worth nearly £3 million, if Birmingham had achieved even Sandwell’s rate, it would have collected an additional £8 million – and a similar sum each year.

The DCLG’s non-ringfenced reserves naughty list is even more contestable. There is no set or professionally agreed formula for an ‘appropriate’ level of reserves, or for the balance between earmarked/ringfenced and unallocated reserves. But when CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) asserts that councils increasing their cash reserves “is essential for protecting frontline services” and finance officers advise that, with council funding over the next few years being exceptionally uncertain, it’s only prudent to set aside reserves in anticipation, it’s hard for councillors – and should be for Pickles – to argue otherwise.

Birmingham’s prominence on this particular list – again, a consequence of its sheer size – is just perverse, given repeated warnings by the council’s external auditors about the councils’ reserves being, if anything, too low. In fact, last month’s Annual Audit letter noted specifically a concern regarding the “relatively low levels of general fund reserves (£85.8 million compared to a revenue budget of £3.5 billion)” (p.7).

Returning to tax collection, if there are numbers of individual councils that find it difficult to, as the minister put it, “carry out the simple function of placing a charge on an individual and collecting it”, what should we make of Her Majesty’s less than exhaustively tenacious Revenue and Customs (HMRC)?

One of HMRC’s helpful ancillary services – or hostages to fortune – is its annual report detailing all the taxes it doesn’t collect: in 2012-13 just the £34 billion – or 6.8% of the total it should have managed. In other words, all but the very worst council tax collection rates exceed the average managed by the people whose sole job is tax collection.

If we take that most “simple function” of individual taxation, English local authorities failed to collect £734 million (3%) in council tax, while HMRC failed to collect £14.2 billion (5.3%) in income tax, NI contributions and capital gains tax. From businesses, councils failed to collect £478 million (2.1%) in non-domestic rates, while HMRC failed to collect £12.4 billion (10.9%) in VAT, and £3.9 billion (8.7%) in corporation tax.

As Matthew, the Galilean tax collector-turned-gospeller, might have put it: You hypocrite, Pickles; first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

]]>http://inlogov.com/2015/02/19/pickles-shock-horror-news-biggest-councils-have-biggest-tax-arrears/feed/0inlogovgameCore Activities: notes from the Core Cities Summit, February 2015http://inlogov.com/2015/02/13/core-activities-notes-from-the-core-cities-summit-february-2015/
http://inlogov.com/2015/02/13/core-activities-notes-from-the-core-cities-summit-february-2015/#commentsFri, 13 Feb 2015 16:06:43 +0000http://inlogov.com/?p=1196Continue reading →]]>On the 11th February over 300 people from across the public sector met for the Core Cities Summit in Glasgow. This post summarises the point reached so far and some of the conference’s live issues, and suggests three areas for further consideration: how to involve MPs and MSPs more fully, engaging communities in the debate and considering what kind of country the UK should become.

Core Cities at the forefront of innovation

The Core Cities buzz continued in Glasgow on 11th February at its well attended summit which launched the next stages in cities-based devolution discussions. The Core Cities’ approach to innovation through collaboration has challenged the government by setting the pace. It was a cross-border event which included a look at how the next round of devolution proposals will affect Glasgow, as an indication of the next stages of the development of the Core Cities campaign.

A charter for devolution and recommendations for action

The Charter sets itself in the context of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and the waves of change emanating from the 2014 Scottish Referendum vote. It calls for action to consider what a ‘modern, mature state for the UK’ would look like, one which enables prosperity, equality and democracy. It sees itself as being applicable to the whole of the UK and not just to the Core Cities.

Devolution to local places is at the heart of its proposals with local freedom to make strategic decisions, to tax and invest, and to determine the shape of strategic planning and service delivery at the sub-regional level. To enable this, it calls on the Government to establish an independent body to facilitate devolution and oversee change, while ensuring that communities are strengthened, key investments are made, services are transformed and decision making devolved further to the appropriate level in communities, neighbourhoods and individuals.

Respublica’s report, Restoring City States, focuses on city devolution. It seeks to build on the recent city deals with Manchester and the Sheffield City Region in order to forge a ‘rebalancing of the relationship between central government and cities. Many of the issues set out in the Charter for Devolution are explored in more depth and underpin the report’s eight recommendations.

Core Cities’ case for change

Opening the Summit, Cllr Sir Richard Leese stressed that the summit was about a constitutional settlement, not just the devolution of powers. Ben Page highlighted the fact that whilst people are dubious about whether devolution is of relevance, they are concerned about inequality and there is potentially the space to try something new and to engage them in debate, as shown in the Scottish Referendum. In the Scottish context, Jim Murphy MP sought greater devolution by the Scottish Government to its cities. However Keith Brown MSP wondered whether local government could make more of its existing powers and was uncertain whether legislative change was really needed to achieve the Core Cities’ aims, a rehearsal of some of the debate nationally.

Considering reform to powers and fiscal matters, Danny Alexander MP wanted to see the government look at the devolution of stamp duty, amongst other measures, with a clear fiscal base to municipal re-empowerment. Philip Blond, Respublica, considered that the post 1945 model of the state was no longer fit for purpose and sought a new model to deal with a much more complex public service challenge. He considered that there might need to be some intervention in some ‘trailing’ cities to jump-start change, but considered cities to be the only agents nationally capable of bringing equality in an age of globalisation. Cllr Nick Forbes called for the next Comprehensive Spending Review to be based on place, rather than the individual spending limits of departments.

On the future form of devolution, Cllr Nick Forbes also stressed the need for cities not to be ‘walled cities’ but ones open to their surrounding partners, rooted in their local hinterland, pulling together to develop infrastructure, and linked into ideas about social justice. Pat Ritchie highlighted the need for devolution to be capable of adaptation to the different needs of different places. And Mayor Jules Pipe, speaking for London Councils, highlighted a need for devolution thinking to extend nationally, with further change needed in London, for example, to meet the extent of empowerment sought by the Core Cities.

Gaps and challenges

The focus of the day focused more on the growth agenda that it was on the social development of cities, although they are of course entwined, there were also some interesting gaps and unresolved issues.

The first gap relates to national politicians, the devolution debate has made much of devolving from government to city or place, but little has been said about the role of MPs (or MSPs). All of the cities involved in the discussion have numerous national representatives who are currently not part of the picture. There was talk on the day about the development of local Public Accounts Committees but as yet no sign of the development of a shadow version to see if it might work and help to hold a core city to account.

The second gap points out there has been little discussion of the quality of community in cities and aspirations for their development. Perhaps understandably much of the discussion has been aimed at central government, but the relationship of local people to each other and to the local state needs to be as much a part of the desired debate about the modern form of the state as a whole as any of the issues highlighted at the summit.

The third gap relates to the fundamental question of the kind of state the UK wants to be in the future (and here it is worth pointing out that this has been almost solely a local government led debate which of necessity does not yet include key local players in national services such as the NHS). This is a debate which perhaps should be at the core of the general election campaign, but is currently not on the agenda.

Next steps for everyone?

English devolution to a system based around London and the core cities would carry considerable risks if it becomes an exercise which bolts-on powers without thinking through the systemic change that is needed. We need to resolve the question of responsibilities, of citizens, communities, cities and regions, before the reallocation of powers.

… The UK’s greatest potential is contained in its networked nature, and the same can be said of the best cities and counties. What is needed is therefore constitution which does not just chunk up centralised power and devolve it.

… There should be a clear agreement about how power is shared (rather than devolved) between different legitimate and competent parts of the UK state, including local, regional and national governments.

So the current debate is a necessary one about devolution, but perhaps needs to develop into one about power sharing. To return to the Magna Carta theme, the Barons sought limitations to the exercise of central power and a clear basis for sharing it. They also did not rely solely on rational argument but potentially had the means to force King John to comply with their demands. It will be interesting to see how the Core Cities muster their forces and deploy them during the coming election and beyond.

As Sir Richard Leese recognised, the number of places that can be considered as core cities is necessarily limited. However it is clear that the approach that Core Cities have set out is one which has its application across England especially and the UK as a whole. All can benefit from the learning about ‘what works’ in creative, collective approaches to change and the development of confident, positive narratives about places and their people. And INLOGOV is uniquely placed to offer support by sharing learning and exploring approaches which challenge barriers of stagnation, short-sightedness, parochialism or old rivalries, all of which get in the way of what is important: long-term development based on outward-looking collaboration.

Daniel Goodwin is an Associate Fellow of INLOGOV. He was previously Executive Director of Finance & Policy at the Local Government Association and Chief Executive of St Albans City & District Council.

In choosing to announce the 2015-16 local government finance settlement just eight days before Christmas, ministers presumably hoped – as, indeed, I’d expected – that the argument about the presentation of funding and spending cut statistics for local authorities, both collectively and individually, would have died away by mid-January. However, it hasn’t, which is why I too am returning to the topic, which had its importance re-emphasised several times over the past week. First, Paul Woods, until recently Newcastle’s long-term and respected Treasurer, expressed in a Local Government Chronicle column (13 Jan.) his disappointment at the widespread:

“Acceptance being given to a low 1.8% spending power cut, as opposed to the more realistic analysis by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA) of a 6% cut. A truly independent and objective analysis of the settlement … would be unlikely to conclude that spending power has only been cut by 1.8% … [or that] as the government has claimed, the settlement is fair to north, south, urban and rural areas”.

That last ‘claim’ was a direct quote from the opening paragraph of an article that Local Government Minister, Kris Hopkins, had evidently felt it necessary to write for the same magazine (LGC 12 Jan.). Not surprisingly, it largely reiterated points from his settlement announcement – including that “councils facing the highest demand for services continue to receive substantially more funding … than authorities facing less pressure”, and that, for pooled budgets like the public health grant, “it would be perverse not to consider [all] the money as part of the funding available” to local authorities, including that actually spent by the NHS. Then, last Friday, we had the open letter from Rob Whiteman, CIPFA Chief Executive, to DCLG’s new Permanent Secretary, Melanie Dawes. After congratulating Dawes on her appointment, Whiteman attempted quite a barbed lecturette on “ethics in government”, including the need for “greater clarity” in the department’s public communications, as opposed:

“to the rhetoric and spin that has too often characterised the presentation of the numbers by DCLG and others over the past few years … [meaning that] … the public are being misinformed about official information and data. For example, describing transferred resources that still must be spent on the NHS as increasing councils’ ‘spending power’ in a way that under-reports their loss of DCLG grant is disingenuous.”

Given these developments, it seemed worthwhile using these columns – in which it is possible to include both links/references and a couple of rather striking graphs – to explain a bit more fully, if very definitely non-technically – what this dispute is about.

Grants and grant funding can seem both bewildering and paint-dryingly boring. But, at our combined average age of ten, my younger sister Jennifer and I didn’t know this, and we reckoned we’d cracked at least the essential principles – which was fortunate, as we and our mum were even more heavily grant-dependent than today’s metropolitan borough councils.

In our traditional patriarchal household, my father was the sole wage-earner, and he funded my mother through her weekly (Friday) ‘housekeeping’ grant, and us children through our weekly (Saturday) pocket-money grants. Opportunistically, through grandparental charity or the undertaking of ‘errands’ (mainly me) and ‘chores’ (J), we could increase our revenue spending power. But we could also suffer largely non-negotiable grant-loss, to pay for the upkeep of J’s pet rabbit, a cricket ball-broken window, or – seasonal touch here – Christmas gifts for the afore-mentioned grandparents.

The point is that, callow as we were, we understood perfectly the distinction between grant funding and spending power – unlike the sections of our media who either parroted or headlined not the finance settlement’s actual words – let alone its meaning – but DCLG ministers’ political message. ITV was typical: “the amount of funding councils will get in central government grants will be reduced by 1.8% in 2015-16”.

That’s what ministers hoped we’d hear, but for them the F-for-funding word has become as unmentionable in company as the Old English F-expletive. ‘Amount of funding’ is much too coarse, measurable and comprehensible. It’s far more refined – and cryptic – to talk of spending power (SP), particularly if you get to define it yourself. What minister Hopkins announced, therefore, was that “the average spending power reduction for councils in 2015-16 is just 1.8%”. Indeed, with “the additional transformation money the government is giving councils to improve services, this reduction falls to 1.6%” (emphases added). See, it’s getting even better. Moreover:

“Those facing the highest demand for services continue to receive substantially more funding. For example, Middlesbrough has a spending power per household of £2,441, which is £871 more than the £1,570 per household in Windsor and Maidenhead.”

This is the fifth year in which ministers have attempted this sleight of hand, and, to be fair, most of the media have caught on. Most did report that the 1.8% cut is not in councils’ grant-funding, but their spending power – though still only a minority explained the distinction and its significance.

It would have been like my father deciding in one of the 1950s’ sterling crises that we should all (kids included) be in it together, and imposing a three pence austerity cut in my pocket money of two shillings and sixpence (2/6 = 30 pre-decimal pence) – but overlooking that he’d already cut it by sixpence for cricketing misdemeanours, which I’d subsequently made up through errand work. As he might have explained, it was only a 10% reduction in my spending power, not the 12.5% grant cut I was claiming. Besides, he knew of better-off families in Westcliff (SE Essex’s nearly-as-posh equivalent of Windsor and Maidenhead) whose children didn’t even get weekly pocket money.

Following the Coalition’s ideological decision to reduce the budget deficit largely but selectively through public spending cuts, local government ministers in 2010-11 faced the problem of explaining to the public that they’d be cutting central government grant funding of council revenue spending by an unprecedented 28% in cash terms (40% in real terms, allowing for inflation) over four years, with 21% ‘front-loaded’ in the first two years.

The scale of ministers’ task can be seen in a simple but powerful chart in a recent House of Commons research paper, in which the dark green columns represent the savage annual average percentage cuts in councils’ grant funding, in contrast to the generally modest increases to which they’d been accustomed. Their solution: to replace the nasty dark green columns with much less alarming light green ones.

First, they – or their civil servants – restructured the whole grant system, to make before-after comparisons more difficult. They then created their Revenue Spending Power measure, which they claimed would – by including council tax receipts, certain specific grants, and NHS social care funding – give a fuller picture of a council’s overall financial position.

Fuller, yes, but not full. Contrary to what is stated in the Government’s Plain English Guide to the 2015-16 Grant Settlement (para. 3) income from fees, charges and investments is NOT included in SP. These are income sources likely to decline in a recession and whose addition to SP would emphasise, rather than de-emphasise, councils’ grant dependency – so nothing like as politically helpful as the contrived SP measure, which could instantly reduce a 28% grant cut to a 14% cut in spending power.

Ministers, then, view SP in the same way as Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass. It can mean just what they choose it to mean – or more, or less. If, say, they excluded council tax receipts from SP, any percentage grant cut would immediately become more (bad). If, on the other hand, they could include the whole of the new Better Care Fund (BCF) – a single pooled budget to incentivise the NHS and local councils to work more collaboratively – any cut would immediately become less (good).

Yes, of course it’s confusing; that’s its whole point. Present the public with two, three or more magnitudes of ‘spending power cuts’, and the chances are we’ll either turn off altogether or hear the one that’s shouted loudest: the Government’s. For 2015-16, as we’ve seen, the Government’s figure is 1.8% – or possibly 1.6%.

Neither the figures nor ministers’ form of presentation came, by this time, as a surprise, and the Local Government Association (LGA), attempting to get its retaliation in at least simultaneously, released its own figures to coincide with ministers’ announcements. These showed first that the Government’s total funding support to local authorities will be cut by 13.7% from the 2014-15 figure. It’s that F-for-funding word again, so ministers didn’t bother mentioning it, but it’s shown as a provisional figure in the Commons chart.

The LGA’s second calculation was that, if council tax income were excluded from SP – since it’s a completely different type of income from government grant – the average reduction would be not 1.8%, but 3.7%. Third, if you also exclude the NHS’s portion of the £3.5 billion Better Care Fund and include in SP only the estimated £2 billion spent on social care services by local authorities, the arguably rather truer average reduction in councils’ revenue spending power becomes 8.8%, or nearly five times the Government’s figure.

CIPFA’s analysis, as we’ve already seen, was different again: a 6% drop in spending power – through including council tax income but excluding ring-fenced grants and the Better Care Fund. To adapt the old Punch cartoon caption: you takes your choice of definition, but you still loses your money.

And that spending power cut, to repeat, is the average for all English local authorities – and even under the Government’s SP figures, individual authorities could lose up to 6.4% of their spending power, though others would receive a nice little increase. But, especially with a General Election imminent, ministers like Kris Hopkins want to persuade us that their settlement “offers a fair deal to taxpayers all over the country; north and south, rural and urban. Councils facing the highest demand for services continue to receive substantially more funding and have about 40% higher spending power than authorities facing less pressure.”

That last sentence really is disingenuous. Any formula or block grant comprises both a redistributive element, to compensate for local authorities’ differing needs, and a negative ‘resources’ element, to reflect their differing ability to raise their own money through council tax. Even this government hasn’t contemplated abolishing the redistributive principle altogether. But let’s see how it judges that its way of doing things offers a ‘fair deal’ to taxpayers, regardless of where they live.

Again, I’ll start personally. I pay my council tax to Birmingham City Council, whose cut in spending power, according to the Government’s figures, is 6%, close to the maximum 6.4%. Cuts for other West Midlands metropolitan authorities run from Sandwell (5.1%) and Wolverhampton (5%), through Walsall (4%), Coventry (3.9%) and Dudley (2.8%) to Solihull – the sole Conservative-controlled council and, as it transpires, the only one whose SP will increase (+0.4%).

So Birmingham’s cut is proportionately the greatest, despite, as noted in Sir Bob Kerslake’s recent highly critical report on the council for the Government, having “more poor children than anywhere else in England” (p.6), and being overall one of the most multiply deprived authorities in the country.

According to the DCLG’s ranking of England’s 326 local authorities by multiple deprivation – Birmingham is 13th most deprived, Sandwell 9th, Wolverhampton 20th, Walsall 35th, Coventry 53rd, Dudley 113th, and Solihull 212th – almost precisely the same order as that for percentage SP cuts and, on the face of it, a non-obvious operationalisation of a ‘fair deal’.

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

When it comes to setting sustainable construction standards new research reveals English local authorities favour national regulation over local powers.

National planning policy and building regulations have undergone considerable reform in recent years. The latest incarnation is embodied in the Housing Standards Review, (HSR) published in 2014. The HSR sought to consolidate the plethora of standards into national building regulations whilst making it harder for local authorities to introduce standards that supplement these national regulations in response to local needs or priorities. One area where local powers have been significantly curtailed by the HSR is in the sustainability and energy efficiency of homes.

Since the publication of Building A Greener Future and the Supplement to the Planning Policy Statement: Planning and Climate Change in 2007, local authorities have been able to set local standards on building sustainability to reflect local needs and priorities. Although options are provided in the HSR for local standard setting in a number of areas to supplement the revamped building regulations, this isn’t one of those. The extent to which sustainable construction targets can be set locally has thus been significantly curtailed. The response was predictably fierce. The Association for the Conservation for Energy remarked on the ‘political naivety’ and ‘shortsightedness’ associated with the decision. A report by the Environmental Audit Committee from November 2013 suggests that ‘this decision bulldozes local choice in favour of a one-size-fits-all approach designed to benefit developers who want to build homes on the cheap’.

Yet what do local authorities themselves think? The evidence points towards local authorities being against the idea of local standard setting in the area of energy-efficiency in buildings.

When asked in the HSR consultation whether sustainable construction standards should be incorporated into National Building Regulations (thus restricting local choice) an overwhelming number of local authorities responded in favor (46 of 69 responses). When asked their views on whether local authorities should have the powers to set ‘Merton Rule’ type policies (which mandate the minimum renewable energy use in a building) ‘a number of local planning authorities are also in favour of a review [of the Merton Rule type policies], who do not see a role for planning in decisions about the energy performance of houses’.

What’s more, as part of my on-going research into this area I have surveyed all local English local authorities. Only 50% have embraced the standard setting powers that they have had up until the HSR, and even then there are serious concerns over whether those local standards are being enforced.

An obvious question that arises from this is why? Why do local authorities propose a national Building Regulations led approach to sustainable construction standards? In the course of my research two factors have been raised.

First, many local authorities feel that the national debate on sustainable construction is in such flux that to expend resources on incorporating local standards is risky. Take Harrogate Borough Council for example, who took a proactive lead on introducing sustainable construction targets in their 2009 Local Plan. Subsequent changes to the planning framework published by central government in 2012 reformed the technicalities of local standard setting and in effect forced Harrogate to tear up their plan and start the process again. This obviously comes at considerable costs. When resources are already being stretched to breaking point the threat of having the rug pulled from under their feet is enough to put a lot of local authorities off the idea.

Second, local authorities are subject to strong external pressures from developers that prioritise growth over sustainability. Many lack the necessary internal capacity (whether in terms of expertise, institutional norms, pro-environment policy networks or dominant discourse favouring ecologism) to overcome these pressures. On that basis many consider any local powers a waste, because they can’t be fully exploited.

We must not therefore be alarmist when we look at the HSR and its curtailment of local powers. It is by no means perfect; the extent to which the sustainability and environmental standards of homes can be raised in the future is largely down to how the Building Regulations are going to be reformed and there are doubts that it will go far enough in this regard. Nevertheless, the evidence points towards local authorities favouring a national approach. We should listen to and respect this view, and try to understand why they think like this at all. Only then can we hope to do anything about it.

Max Lempriere is a third year PhD student in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. His research interests include the politics of planning and construction, local government innovation and ecological modernisation.

My primary school history teacher always taught that the shires of England were mapped out by Alfred the Great. For me, that story was confirmed by an illustration in my treasured Ladybird book on the great man (Alfred – not the teacher) that shows four burly Saxons knocking in a waymark post as they lay out the boundary pattern. I still have that book. I later learned that while the reality was much more complicated, it is essentially true that much of our shire county structure would be familiar to a returning Anglo Saxon – even if not much else would be.

And while our present pattern of local government boundaries isn’t quite so longstanding, the institutional structure of local government outside the cities and metropolitan areas in England has been much more stable than the landscape in health administration – which seems to change with every incoming Secretary of State. Of course, we’ve seen some reorganisation in the shire counties in the years since 1974, when the foundations of our present system were put into place, but much of rural England is still governed by two tiers of council – three if you count the parishes.

The relative stability of the system doesn’t prevent people talking about changing it. On the contrary, no gathering of local government officers or members would be complete without talk of the supposed delights or evils of unitary local government – especially in the bar later at night. Our counterparts in Wales and Scotland have gone down the unitary path some time ago; and for some, the crazy English mosaic of cities, unitaries, counties, boroughs and districts is an affront to rational workable local governance.

Eric Pickles isn’t among these. And while the great man is famous (or infamous) for many things, his mythical “pearl-handled revolver” ready for the first person to come into his office and propose the structural reorganisation of local government, must be one of his most repeated aphorisms. For once, he may be on to something. Recent work by the New Local Government Network points out that while there are savings to be had from “unitarising” two tier councils, there are costs involved as well. The report also makes a strong case that some of the claimed savings from reorganisation may already have been realised as district councils increasingly work in collaboration and share services and even management teams in some cases.

INLOGOV is now working with the District Councils’ Network (DCN) to explore further the case for retaining the essence of the two tier structure after the 2015 general election. This doesn’t mean no-change: rather, it recognises that structural reorganisation of itself may offer little stimulus to change. Transformation comes from adopting new and sometimes radically different ways of working and collaborating across the public and voluntary sectors rather than worrying about tiers of councils. We’re relatively early in the project and the DCN team has just issued a “call for evidence” to districts (and indeed others) to showcase new and innovative models of working – especially where there is good evidence of positive outcomes.

So now is the opportunity for those in two tier local government to map out the case for innovation and creativity in the way they work – but still set in the 1974 institutional structures. You have until January 16th 2015 to make a submission.

Perhaps my Ladybird book (price, 2/6d) can have some currency for a little while longer?

Anthony Mason is an Associate at INLOGOV and works mostly on local government systems and organisation and on improving public sector partnerships. His early career was in local government followed by more than 20 years in PwC’s public sector consultancy team

]]>http://inlogov.com/2014/12/18/newwaysofworkingfordistrictcouncils/feed/0inlogovAnthony MasonThe journey to the common: what is the role of the voluntary sector?http://inlogov.com/2014/12/12/journey-to-the-common-what-is-the-role-of-the-voluntary-sector/
http://inlogov.com/2014/12/12/journey-to-the-common-what-is-the-role-of-the-voluntary-sector/#commentsFri, 12 Dec 2014 11:14:48 +0000http://inlogov.com/?p=1170Continue reading →]]>Anna Coleman and Julia Segar

A recent publication by the New Local Government Network (NLGN) looked at how local councils are preparing for the future and suggests depressingly that “there is simply no way that local government can reach 2018 let alone 2020 while still delivering the full range and quality of services currently on offer”(p6).

Simply put, we have an ageing population, with associated increasing demand for care services and draconian cuts in council budgets. The NLGN suggest we could be facing a future of “private affluence and public squalor”. However, it is not all doom and gloom. Perhaps austerity can be a strong stimulus for innovation? How would this work I hear you ask?

They suggest a new model being discussed around the country. The idea would be to mix technology, preventative investment, integration of council services with those of the NHS and others, alongside the creation of new partnerships between local government and local populations.

The NLGN report suggests three possible ‘landscapes’ for councils of the future. Firstly, a wasteland – a world of poorly prepared councils forced to cut services dramatically. Secondly, the wild meadow – councils provide core functions and rely on spontaneous public contributions to replace dwindling services. Finally, the common – the focus moves away from the council to places where it shares responsibility jointly with communities and businesses. This latter approach is seen as optimistic and would need to build on a strong social and voluntary economy.

This idea is timely for us as about a month ago Anna chaired, and Julia attended, a briefing event in the NW of England on Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs) and how (if at all) they were engaging with local voluntary organisations and local Healthwatch. Speakers at the event came from a local Healthwatch, a local overarching voluntary organisation and someone associated with Regional Voices. Speakers described their organisations and their relationships with their HWBs. They reflected on what could be done to improve these interactions to benefit all involved. So could we tap into some of these ideas for helping to build the idea of a common?

The official vision for HWBs from the Department of Health emphasised: joint local leadership between Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and local authorities; key roles for elected councillors, clinicians, and directors of public health, adults and children’s services; the enablement of greater local democratic legitimacy of commissioning decisions, and provision for opportunities for challenge, discussion, and the involvement of local representatives. However, HWBs have no formal powers, and their ability to influence others will depend upon their success in building relationships and interacting with other organisations locally. See our previous blog (Coleman 2014) for further detail on HWBs.

On paper, then, HWBs look like ideal forums for enabling the growth of both vision and action for building local commons. Speakers at the NW event, suggested that a shift in emphasis needs to take place before such a vision can begin to be realized. They argued that a tokenistic place on a HWB is of little value either to the HWB itself or to voluntary sector organisations. The voluntary sector together with Healthwatch, can provide valuable information about needs, concerns and available assets from a range of voices within a local community, with evidence varying between robust data to insightful patient stories (National Voices 2014). In Manchester alone, there are over 3000 voluntary organisations delivering a wide range of services to diverse groups. The estimated worth of the sector in 2012 was £477 million drawing on the work of over 94,000 volunteers (Dayson et al 2013). So HWBs should consider carefully who might sit on (or with) the HWB, and at what level (Board or sub-group) to represent the views of the voluntary sector and how these individuals should be chosen.

It was suggested that HWBs are missing a trick if they don’t engage effectively with local Healthwatch (who have a seat on HWBs) and voluntary organisations (who may be invited to sit on HWBs).These organisations have valuable knowledge, local intelligence and capacity at community level. The speakers indicated that very rigid structures and ways of working do not always work and that having a seat at the table does not guarantee that organisations are heeded. In order to develop new ideas and innovative solutions for complex local health and wellbeing needs, HWBs need to devote time and attention to voluntary organisations and to Healthwatch. In the current state of austerity sharing resources, skills and information is vital and good practice both locally and nationally.

This briefing event asserted the role of the voluntary sector in improving the health and wellbeing of local populations. The contributions that they could make in helping realise the landscape of the common is also clear. Step one on this path is to see, hear and listen to these organisations on HWBs.

Now read:

Anna and Julia’s article Joining it up? Health and Wellbeing Boards in English Local Governance: Evidence from Clinical Commissioning Groups and Shadow Health and Wellbeing Boards is published in Local Government Studies.

Anna Coleman is a Research Fellow in the HIPPO team (Health policy, politics and organisation groups), part of the Institute for Population Studies at the University of Manchester. HiPPO also constitutes, jointly with researchers from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Kent, the Department of Health Policy Research Unit in Commissioning and the Healthcare System (PRUComm). PRUComm provides evidence to the Department of Health to inform the development of policy on all aspects of health-related commissioning.

Julia Segar is a qualitative researcher in the Centre for Primary Care at the University of Manchester. Her previous projects were concerned with telehealthcare and with changes in the healthcare system. Julia part of the Health, Policy, Politics and Organisation (HiPPO) research group within the Centre.

Disclaimer: The research for referenced paper is funded by the Department of Health. The views expressed are those of the researchers and not necessarily those of the Department of Health.